For a relatively small South Florida town, Jupiter has attracted a few national news stories. Recently there was the disturbed man who gunned down 4 members of his own family, and Tiger Woods is building his mother a house here. Bringing Dr. Oz to Jupiter is the recently confirmed pediatric brain tumor cluster just West of here. This has stirred up a lot of media attention and later this week Dr. Oz is doing a special on the cancer cluster.

What type of doctor is Dr. Oz? He is a heart surgeon. His training is in using a knife to cut the chest open and in sewing arteries together to heal the diseased heart. Why is he talking to the nation about a brain cancer cluster in South Florida? Why does he have a show where he lectures on everything from swine flu to diarrhea? This situation reminds me of a soap opera where the show’s doctor delivers a baby, removes someone’s brain cancer, and treats someone else for AIDS, all in the same episode. Sorry folks….that’s not the way the real world of medicine works.

O.K…so call me jealous. That doesn’t change the fact that our nation deserves real experts dealing out the facts, not some handsome Oprah pet doc pretending to be G-d’s gift to the medical world.

Operating on the heart requires constant practice and intense focus on only what lies underneath that knife. It shouldn’t come as a surprise therefore, that the last cardiac surgeon I would want operating on my heart is Dr. Oz.